You Kill Me

2007 "Professional alcoholic hit man gets life back on track thanks to her"
6.4| 1h30m| R| en| More Info
Released: 09 February 2007 Released
Producted By: Echo Lake Entertainment
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website: http://www.youkillmethefilm.com/
Info

While drying out on the West Coast, an alcoholic hit man befriends a tart-tongued woman who might just come in handy when it's time for him to return to Buffalo and settle some old scores.

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Director

John Dahl

Production Companies

Echo Lake Entertainment

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You Kill Me Audience Reviews

Claysaba Excellent, Without a doubt!!
Glimmerubro It is not deep, but it is fun to watch. It does have a bit more of an edge to it than other similar films.
Kaelan Mccaffrey Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.
Zlatica One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.
Jonas1969 I enjoy dark comedy and I found myself drawn into the story in the beginning. Ben Kingsley is excellent as a Polish hit-man with an alcohol problem who gets sent to AA. Téa Leoni is equally good as his lover although their chemistry is less than perfect. For the most part the supporting cast do a good job, yet as a whole it is not good. For a dark comedy to be funny something has to happen, but here it's mostly a drama with incredulous characters thrown in together. Perhaps the quality of the acting here detracts from the film because as a drama the story fails and it never really becomes a comedy.I get the feeling that director John Dahl realized it was to realistic and that's why he tried to get a comedic mood with some wacky music, but it doesn't help.If you find peoples pain a laughing matter then you'll laugh at You Kill Me. No? Then you'll sit through a pointless but well acted film.
nomerit Comedy? What's so funny about watching an ugly deadbeat alcoholic attending 6 sessions (by the time I turned it off) of alchoholics anonymous? Set off by a woeful script of grunts and mumbles and drunken slurrings. Served up with lashings of Hollywood's religious "God will Save you" redemption drivel Another Reviewer mentioned the "Sassy dialogue" of Tea Leone - well I managed to watch nearly an hour of this boring film and I still haven't seen any sassy yet - in fact my 80 year old grandmother has more amusing comebacks than Tea's character in this rubbish. Tea is more stony faced and shows less emotion than Keanu - in fact one wonders if she too isn't addicted to something - maybe botox her face is so wooden? Save yourself from being killed with boredom from this film.
egajd This infectious quiet comedy grabbed me by the heart and didn't let it go. As a movie it worked at all levels - script, production, acting. The concept of the drunk killer being played straight could have fallen miserably if any of these parts of the film had failed. But every part contributed to the whole, to which I would like to particularly commend the director/producers for the beautiful restraint they showed with the film's score and music.Some of the commentators here expressed concern over the mobs of Buffalo, but that was one of the straightest jokes on film! The Polish and Irish squabbling over pennies and snow removal as if these were the meaning of life!? This sets the counterpoint for Kingsley brilliant portrayal of Frank, the reluctant AA member who begins to leave his old ways of living and join the living. He's left the dead of winter for the possibility of life while learning to dress dead bodies. In SF he discovers that he is no longer bound by tradition, in which like a loser he had done as he was told. And this counterpoint is extended by the petty mobsters moving with puffed up TV melodrama towards their deaths because they are bound to a code that they are unable or unwilling to break.Frank's hesitancy in embracing AA is well scripted and acted, but becomes brilliant once he decides to join and takes the part about honesty to heart. Following his motto about the importance of precision, Frank conscientiously chooses to be 100 percent honest. Some have said that anyone could have done that role, but I don't think many could have made it believable. It was scripted and acted well enough that I did not have a credibility problem with Frank's honesty.However, the brilliance of the movie comes fully to life with the introduction of Leoni 's portrayal of Laurel and the development of the relationship between her and Frank. In a very few short lines the two characters establish an awareness that they have a common quirk - unflinching honesty, which was affirmed with Laurel's humorous acquiescence to Frank's observation that the dead step-father's toes would need to be broken in order to fit his feet into the stolen bowling shoes.And I would like to stand and give Leoni my ovation and apology. I had made a point of avoiding her films until I accidentally saw "Spanglish.' In that movie she opened my mind to the possibility that she has some acting skill, because she managed to keep a thoroughly unlikable neurotic character human and interesting when it would have been very easy not to have been able to do that. Here, as Laurel, the subtlety of her reactions of surprise, disappointment, and the myriad other emotions she needs to act is a brilliant dance of words and discovery with Kingsley, who portrays with straight man comic brilliance his surprise and fear at wanting to reach for something in life other than a bottle or a gun.When Frank reveals to the group that he kills people, the reaction of everyone in the room is wonderful, especially Laurel's. You can see in their faces a bit of disbelief, then a kind of shock. But, as Frank continues to tell his story as a drunk, their initial shock is replaced by the alcoholic's recognition of his or her drunken stories in him. What he does for a living falls away as less important than living in the moment, alive, one day at a time. "I think it went better than you think," his sponsor says after the disclosure. And isn't that a beautiful and affirming life message from a hit man's AA sponsor? Too, too funny!I was so surprised at how good I found my first viewing of this movie that I watched it a second time, the following night. And it was even better the second time. Bravo!
d_petzold300 This movie stars Ben Kingsley as Frank, a hit man for some Russian mobsters based out of Buffalo. He is also a raging alcoholic, and this has caused his job performance to decline. After he falls asleep in his car during a would-be hit, his mob boss uncle sends him to San Francisco, where he is to attend AA meetings and get a job as a mortician's assistant. If you're thinking that this makes absolutely no sense, you're not alone.It gets worse. Well, it actually gets better, but not before getting much, much worse. Frank suddenly becomes a master mortician in spite of a complete lack of training, but his reactions with the people in the funeral home and the AA meetings are interesting. The viewer starts to root for him as they notice positive changes in his life. Luke Wilson is a welcome addition as Frank's sponsor, although he is given almost nothing to do (his character does tell us he is gay, but this ends up having no significance whatsoever). The movie plunges headlong into idiocy with the introduction of the Tea Leoni character. She is completely unrealistic, and her role as a love interest to Frank flounders, as the two actors have no chemistry together. Around the time she comes into the picture, Frank becomes much less engrossing as a character. His characterization is seemingly random; there is no consistency in his behavior. The comedy is low-key and only intermittently funny, especially disappointing considering the comedic pedigree of the cast.Problems abound in this one. Kingsley's accent is terrible and inconsistent. It alternates between Italian, Russian, and Hispanic. Throughout the course of the movie, Frank tells numerous people he is a hit man (including an entire AA group), but nobody seems to care, or wants to do anything about it. The movie relies on cliché scenes to carry it through its final act, most notably when Leoni's insufferable character chases Frank down at the airport, just when he is about to board a flight back to Buffalo.Though it has a strong premise and an interesting first half-hour, the movie quickly becomes a total disaster and devolves into complete nonsense. At the end of the film, Frank celebrates one year of sobriety. I hope to celebrate many, many years of not having seen "You Kill Me". My Grade: D+